Logic and evolution: doubting Darwin; (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 06, 2020, 15:16 (1542 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My attitude remains: you can't do it until the equipment is available.

dhw: Agreed. The illiterate women, the taxi drivers, the musicians make the effort to acquire new skills and in doing do, they change certain sections of the brain. Now they have the equipment. Pre-whales try to swim, and thereby change the legs into flippers. It is the effort to meet requirements that creates the changes which provide the equipment. Every organ must have had its origin in the restructuring of cell communities.

DAVID: More magical Darwin thought. Chance. No. Magical cells, yes.

Nothing to do with Darwin! And there is no more “magic” involved in intelligent beings working out how to cope with or exploit new conditions than there is in having an unknown intelligent mind organizing the same activity.

dhw: You say your God dabbled them or programmed them all 3.8 billion years ago, thereby personally designing every single piece of equipment throughout life’s history (despite wanting only to design H. sapiens).

DAVID: Again your distorted view of my beliefs. God knew, as you well recognize, the tree of life has to be here before us in order to evolve us, but also to provide the energy sources for life to continue.

I do not recognize that millions and millions of non-human life forms “had to be here” before an all-powerful, all-knowing, do-what-he-wants-however-he-wants God could produce the only thing he wanted to produce. That is the non-sensical part of your theory, and you have “no idea” why he would have chosen such a method.

DAVID: They do not know how or when the newer backbone appeared but certainly after a gap from the older form. They are Darwinian like you and still think the modifications slowly crept up, and ignoring Gould's gaps, which troubled him all his life. They never seem to trouble you, but they sure tell me a different very logical story.

dhw: I don’t know why you continue to ignore my explanation of how the gaps are bridged, namely by intelligent beings called cells/cell communities. The fact that you don’t believe it is no excuse for you pretending that I ignore the gaps or believe in total gradualism.

DAVID: You don't explain the gaps by assuming cell committees can design for the future, based on the bacterial ability to edit DNA for necessary responses, as the same species.

I SHAN’T CARRY OUT MY EARLIER THREAT TO FILL A WHOLE PAGE, SINCE THESE POSTS COINCIDE. MY THEORY DOES NOT INVOLVE ANY DESIGN FOR THE FUTURE. CELLS RESPOND. THEY DO NOT ANTICIPATE.

The next part of your post is dealt with elsewhere. The repetitions are becoming tedious, but I don’t have time now to telescope the threads. My apologies to anyone interested.

DAVID: I introduced you to Shapiro and you swallow him, book, line and sinker in a frantic attempt to diminish God or abolish Him. I know you will complain you make theistic efforts. You always do in an anemic humanized way.

This is your usual “frantic attempt” to dodge the illogicality of your own theory and to impose unworthy motives on my attempts to find logical explanations for the mysteries we grapple with. I do not regard this theory as in any way diminishing or abolishing God. It simply provides a logical explanation for the history of evolution as we know it, and the fact that you have fixed beliefs about your God’s purpose, nature, abilities and methods does not mean your illogical theory is correct, your view of God is correct, or my alternative theories and views of God are incorrect.